This is who I am today and that’s okay

The sun softly brushed my cheeks as I stepped out of the car to meet a friend. We met at a local park along the greenway to run together for the second time.

On our first run, the weather was nicer, if a bit muddier, and cool under the shade of the trees covering a trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Today was a warm day in late September with only a slight breeze to brush across the back of our necks.

As we began to jog, we chit-chatted back and forth between snatched breathes about little things. I matched her pace and set my jaw against the twinge I started to feel in my knee.

We passed a group of people catching bugs in little nets along the paved path. Soon, the small twinge turned into a loud, sharp shout with each step forward.

After what felt like a much longer time than only eight minutes running, I confessed I needed a walking break, laughing at how out-of-shape I was. My old, grandma knees sighed with relief when the pounding stopped.

The sharp shout in my knees travelled up my thigh to rest in my left hip after another twenty minutes walking. Passersby probably thought someone get this girl a wheelchair, watching my awkward gait.

When I finally rested my weary knees and hip in the driver’s seat of the car, a stray thought pulled its way to the front of my mind: I don’t think I can run like this anymore.

Suddenly, I saw a different person in the rearview mirror than who I pictured for so long.

Not completely immobile or incapable of exercise, but not the young, toned college student running to escape her problems and emotions. Not the girl who found her only respite from the mocking voices within through running.

But a woman who found herself and lost herself again.

A woman who looked vaguely familiar, as if half hidden beneath the layers of time and circumstance, but who didn’t quite recognize herself.

A woman with more questions than answers.

I guess time works its subtle magic like this, changing ever so slightly and all at once.

This wasn’t the first time my knees betrayed me. In our first six months living in Virginia, a friend visited us, and we hiked a challenging path called McAfee’s Knob, which runs just short of a half-marathon in length.

The memory of trekking up and down all the hills to the top and then back down, holding tightly to the tears squeaking their way out as we walked downhill pulsed through my mind along with the throbbing in my knees.

Our bodies are the best indicator of our physical limits and even when we treat them kindly, exercising when we can, getting up off the gray couch slightly smudged with dirt to walk the dog along our street, they don’t always hold up the way we thought they would.

The way we see ourselves is sometimes set apart from our real selves.

I want to see an athletic runner, who takes her son in the jogging stroller for 5ks and jogs along the greenway.
I want to see a career woman, balancing her work, her family, and her writing without losing her mind.
I want to see someone who doesn’t need the approval and validation of other people.

But our vision of life and ourselves doesn’t always tell the truth of our reality as we live it.

I am not the runner I used to be. My knees will not allow it.
I am not the career woman, and even if I were, in our pandemical situation it would look much different than I had in mind at the beginning.
I am not the kind of person who lives easily outside the lines of approval drawn for me by others.

All these things I’m not and so many more that I am.

I am a mother. I am a writer. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I am someone who enjoys looking at gardens but doesn’t care for tending them. I am someone who sees potential when buying houses, instead of all the little projects they’ll require. I am the person who longs for the affirmation of my goodness from others, but who is also fiercely independent.

This is who I am, and that is okay.